There’s no better way to connect to the great outdoors than by camping, and there’s no more comfortable, convenient, or luxurious way to camp than in an RV! But RV camping still has its challenges. If you want to make home cooked meals while you’re on the road, you can, but RV kitchens have limited space. You need to make the most of the tools and space you’ve got if you want a stress-free cooking experience.
Luckily for you, we here at Airstream of Vermont at Pete’s RV Center can help! We’ve put together some of our favorite tips for cooking in an RV kitchen below. If you need more information, have questions, or just want to see our selection of Airstream® RVs for sale, contact our store in South Burlington, Vermont. Our friendly and knowledgeable staff can help you find what you need at prices you want!
Planning
The biggest step for making sure any and all cooking goes off without a hitch is simple: plan ahead. You should figure out when and what each day’s meals will be, right down to the snacks. This will ensure you have all the ingredients and foods you need to keep everyone full and happy without running out of space. Make sure not to overpack, but also make sure you have enough to keep folks comfortably full.
You might also consider planning large meals with leftovers. If there’s enough extra food, it can be used to fill another meal slot down the line. There are plenty of meals, like chili, that are camping staples and that taste even better reheated!
Batch Cooking
Batch cooking can also make a huge difference on your trip. Essentially, if you know you’re going to use one ingredient in multiple meals, you just make extra of it and store the extra until you need it. For example, you can plan two different meals that use three chicken breasts and grill or bake all of them at once. Whatever you don’t eat that night, you use for the next meal that requires chicken! This saves water, power, and time by preparing multiple servings of a food all at once.
Accessories
There are a number of accessories you can add to your kitchen to make cooking simpler. While your kitchen space is at a premium, there are a few investments you can make that take up some space but save you time and money down the line.
Cooking Gadgets
Most RV kitchens come with an oven, stove, and microwave, but each of these is relatively small and has limited uses. A slow cooker or crock pot is a valuable addition to the lineup. These devices are great at one-pot dishes like soups and chilis, roasts or full chickens, or even bread! A slow cooker allows you to do all the cooking at once, throw all the ingredients in, and let it sit for the prescribed amount of time. This has the added benefit of filling the RV with delicious smells.
Another useful gadget is an instant pot or other pressure cooker. These are similar in many ways to a crock pot: great for one-pot cooking, side dishes, breads, and more. But there’s one key difference. Where a slow cooker might take eight hours to make the perfect roast, an instant pot can do it in one. Using pressure and heat, both, these machines make for juicy, tender meals with little wait time.
Storage
Making your food is one thing, but storing it is another. Whether you’re looking at pantry space or filling the fridge, RV kitchens aren’t much for storing huge amounts of anything. One way to maximize the space you’ve got is by using the right storage implements. For this, we recommend square plastic storage containers with vertical, unslanted sides. These allow you to store the maximum amount of food possible without wasting an ounce of space in the process. Your fridge and pantry will never be fuller!
Storing your cooking implements can also be a hassle, especially if they don’t stack. There are cooking pots and measuring cups that are designed specifically to stack within one another, however. This means you can have a full array of cookware that only takes up as much space as the largest item in the set! Other cookware is designed to have removable handles to help prevent awkward pile-ups.
We hope these tips have helped you make the most of your RV kitchen! If you want more tips on cooking in an RV, or if you’re looking for a new RV with a kitchen to try these in, contact Airstream of Vermont at Pete’s RV Center. We proudly serve the New England area, including Worcester, Massachusetts, and Manchester, New Hampshire—let us serve you today!
